Physical chemical and technological evaluation of the juice of seven apple tree cultivars

Abstract

The pomiculture in the Southern States of Brazil is responsible for 98% of the Brazilian apple production. Up to 80% of this production, (880 metric tons), are sold as fresh fruit and around 220 metric tons are apple with low commercial appeal, being utilized by industrial sector. Due to stepwise increase of apple production, the fruit composition becomes important both for commercial and processing sectors. To prepare this paper, five cultivars and two advanced selection were analyzed. The average results showed that almost all samples were statistically different at 5% level of significance but only acidity was not. Total sugars range was from 10.48 to 12.94 g/100mL for Daiane and Sansa cultivars, respectively. The indicator sugar/acidity ratio were quite high compared to the criteria used (index = 20), meaning that all samples have a low acid content, being of low fitness for processing. The cv. Sansa has the highest content of phenol compounds (624 mg/L), while all the other cultivars have less than 459 mg/L. The analyzed samples showed low total acidity and phenol compounds and only the cv Sansa seems to be feasible for use as blending.